Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia

4: Runaway Bodies

Chapter4 Runaway Bodies In the fall of 1793, an indentured white American servant named John Collins ran away from his master's iron works in Chester County, Pennsylvania . Collins's master Dennis Whelan placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette, offering twelve dollars reward for the capture of his valuable skilled worker. Whelan described his servant as being "above 20 years of age... ofa fair complexion, about 5 feet 7 inches high, tolerably square built, his head rather small, his chin peaked and inclines upwards toward his nose, which is sharp." Furthermore, Whelan observed that Collins "chews tobacco profusely, and is fond of strong drink, [and is] peevish and quarrelsome when intoxicated." The runaway "may be easily discovered to be a Forgeman by the inside of his hands being black or blue, and the skin being perforated with a number of small holes." Noting that Collins's clothes "are uncertain, as he may exchange what he took away," Whelan nonetheless described these items as "one coattee of second cloth, a lead coloured sailor fashioned jacket, one red under jacket, Russian sheeting shirts, tow trowsers, one pair of olive green coloured trowsers of foreign manufacture, commonly called royal rib, [and] a beaver hat, remarkably shallow in the crown and very large in the brim."1 Two years later "a Negroe man, named Dick" ran away from his master Abraham Hunt in Trenton. Convinced that Dick had crossed the Delaware and entered Pennsylvania in the company of Ned, another black runaway, Hunt also placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette. His master described Dick as being "about 28 years old, 5 feet 5 inches high, tolerable black smooth skin," with "a bunch of bushy hair behind, and had his fore-top lately cut off; has scars on his back, having been several times flogg'd at the whipping post; if attacked closely will stammer in his answers; had on, and took with him, an old fur hat, with a remarkable high crown and narrow brim, a blue surtout, and homespun trowsers."2 The advertisements for runaway men and women that appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette and other early national newspapers constituted the era's most complete and detailed descriptions of lower sort bodies. The Runaway Bodies 83 advertisements were all about bodies, and comprised both affirmations of power over slave and servant bodies, and protestations of resistance against such power.3 By describing runaways in terms of property, often alongside advertisements for livestock, and by caricaturing them in ways that degraded Mrican Americans, Irish, German, and native-born white Americans, masters defined, evaluated, and objectified their slaves and servants.4 Yet the advertisements and the descriptions they contain serve to illustrate that impoverished men and women who did not enjoy legal ownership ofthe labor of their bodies or even their very bodies, nonetheless strove to refashion and redefine their bodies, thereby reasserting control over them. More than anything else, runaway advertisements tell stories about battles over the bodies of lower sort men and women who owned next to nothing but who sought to own themselves.5 In early national Philadelphia, the differences between advertisements for runaway blacks and runaway whites were far smaller than they had been earlier in the century. With Pennsylvania moving toward gradual abolition, and slavery declining in popularity throughout the Middle Atlantic and even parts ofthe Upper South, a good many black runaways were servants rather than slaves. While the language and tone of advertisements for runawaywhites changed little over time, the masters ofrunaway blacks were ever more aware of their audience, and some took pains to point out that their charges were servants rather than slaves, or that they had been promised liberty. ThusJacob Rush protested that twentytwo -year-old Joe's "time of servitude will end in 7 years and 7 months," while Andrew Lowrey grumbled that he had "intended to set said slave [free] at a reasonable period."6 Philadelphia, more than any other early national city, acted as a magnet for all manner of runaways. As the capital of the first state to begin the process of ending slavery, and the home of a growing free black community, the Quaker City ofBrotherly Love appeared to promise freedom to runaway black slaves and servants hailing from the city and its suburbs, rural Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the Upper South. Indentured white servants, many of them Irish and German , were also attracted by the city's ethnic diversity and rapidly expanding economy. Both black...